Mavic Pro gone...need feedback

[Pointbob]

That's what you get for going up to altitudes that you shouldn't have been at. I have no remorse for people that suffer the consequences of very stupid actions.

Quoted for the douchebaggery.

HEY EVERYONE. WE ARE IN THE PRESENCE OF MR.PERFECT.

Hows the exwife? Your kids talk to you much anymore?

 

[Pointbob]

I have the same feeling as well. The rules and policies are in place to follow safely. The highest you get, the more difficult is going to be to control it.

You ever go past the speed limit driving your donkey? You follow all rules? Amazing we are in the presence of so many self righteous perfect people. Oh god I have to sit down - this is so awesome.

Maybe you should all get your website. How can you bear to be in the presence of so many imperfect losers like us?

 

[Divebomber]

This seems to happen too often at altitude. Winds aloft are often fierce even when winds at the surface are not. If you like flying at these altitudes, there are apps that will give you estimated velocity of winds aloft, and their direction, so you can start your flight going into the wind, which will give you a better chance of the drone making it home. BTW, winds aloft can be much stronger than winds on the surface AND be blowing in a different direction. There are several YouTube videos of this happening to drone operators. They give the RTH or land command and the drone seems to ignore them. While there's no definitive answer for why this happens, based on vehicle behaviors, I have a theory.

When you hit RTH, or if it's initiated automatically due to loss of signal, if the drone is above the RTH altitude, it does not try to descend to that altitude. That altitude is set as a minimum altitude to avoid obstacles on the drone's flight home. If the drone is above that altitude, it will not try to descend to that altitude, and will fly at its current height until it reaches the Home Point. At the Home Point, it will then descend to land. Since the winds were so strong, it's clear from the graphs that your drone was fighting a headwind at the very limits of its capabilities, and of course, it didn't make it (don't need a graph to know that. ;-) ) When the battery finally was depleted, the drone probably landed very near where it was at last contact. What I would suggest next time (if there is a next time) is to command the drone to descend to something reasonable, like 300' (roughly 100 meters) or less, depending upon terrain and vegetation, THEN start for home. I myself don't fly very high, as I'm very risk adverse and VERY cheap, so I don't want to lose my drone. Someone else will have to test my theory.

 

[Zorrobazz]

Sorry to hear about that. I had a similar scare with my MP
Wind taking it whilst I was hands off checking something on the screen.
It occurred to me that it should be possible for a simple algorithm to issue a warning to the pilot that if the Mavic is moving away from the pilot and there are no stick inputs.
I even contacted the DJI GO app people with the request, but didn't really get any help.

Yes a drifting ALERT with no stikk input would be nice

 

[Harrier]

I don't consider myself a reckless pilot. I follow the rules because I know what can happen if you don't, and I'm not talking about just losing the drone. It's like driving your car. Sometimes you feel like putting your foot on the gas pedal and going a bit faster than 55 miles per hour. I've never experienced wind like this before, especially since it was absolutely windstill on the ground. An the drone has always held it's position in very strong winds quite well. So I was caught off guard. After a year I just had too much confidence in my drone. There are some who are REALLY reckless and some who just make honest mistakes. ac0j, this is not necessarily directed towards you. but there are some other people who like to judge people they don't even know. It's easy to beat a man when he's down. I took a calculated risk and lost my drone. That's punishment enough and make me a better pilot the next time around. Below is one of the last pics I took pointing west overlooking "holly pond and the long island sound in Darien CT.View attachment 35324

Nice! That's worth something. Maybe not the final result, but something? Sorry that happened. We all know it's just a matter of time before something happens? I just hope State Farm covers it???

 

[motopokep]

Arnold, I hope you find your drone. One reason I like this forum is because we can learn form each others' mistakes. Yet another reason not to use RTH unless all else fails. I agree with Divebombers' post above. My first reaction would be to bring the drone down, then return home manually. Your situation reminded me to keep my eye on the map and telemetrics. I've had high wind warnings at 400 ft altitude and always immediately brought the drone lower until the warning went away.

I'm curious if it's even worth to use a getterback device, because isn't your drone totaled if it goes underwater? I didn't know these things could swim and be repaired....I guess it's worthwhile to reuse the body, but all electronics and the camera are fried.

 

[colinfowler]

Arnold, I hope you find your drone. One reason I like this forum is because we can learn form each others' mistakes. Yet another reason not to use RTH unless all else fails. I agree with Divebombers' post above. My first reaction would be to bring the drone down, then return home manually. Your situation reminded me to keep my eye on the map and telemetrics. I've had high wind warnings at 400 ft altitude and always immediately brought the drone lower until the warning went away.

I'm curious if it's even worth to use a getterback device, because isn't your drone totaled if it goes underwater? I didn't know these things could swim and be repaired....I guess it's worthwhile to reuse the body, but all electronics and the camera are fried.

If you have dji refresh, the drone has to be sent back.

 

[Cheech Wizard]

This one was harder to estimate due to the two flight logs and the fact that RTH was not engaged most of the time it was drifting, I really don't know how accurate it will be but I gave it a shot. I estimated the drift by using Google Earth to measure the heading of the drift from the first log and then applying it to the last known point of the second log, hoping that the drift patterns would be the same.

For this graph, solid red is battery level, dotted red is battery estimated down to the 10% auto-landing, and solid green is distance with dotted green being the estimated distance in relation to the 10% battery.
View attachment 35287 This second image is where I estimate you Mavic is (roughly), search near where the circle and line meet.View attachment 35294
The last image is a close up of the second.View attachment 35295
Again, there are a lot of factors that make this difficult (for me at least) I'll ask @sar104 to see how far off he thinks I am. Hopefully this will help you find it! -CF
EDIT: pictures have been updated.

That looks like a pretty affluent neighborhood, They like their privacy, they may have called the police to report it... did you try calling the local P.D.?

 

[Cheech Wizard]

You ever go past the speed limit driving your donkey? You follow all rules? Amazing we are in the presence of so many self righteous perfect people. Oh god I have to sit down - this is so awesome.

Maybe you should all get your website. How can you bear to be in the presence of so many imperfect losers like us?

Arnold wanted feedback and got it, posts like this are a waste of time. Go fight on Faceboog.

 

[Hoefantasy]

I hope you learned some important lessons here:

- Don't fly that high (hopefully there isn't a dead body found next to your drone)
-Wind speeds at ground level are NOT the same as winds above (this is taught in grammar school)
-Fly within line sight at all times

Some tips to help out in these situations:

Ventusky is good app to check wind speeds at altitude.

Learning how to read a METAR is also very helpful (they teach this as party of the Part 107 courses)

As for the Mavic Pro itself, if the sensors are on, the max speed is limited, even in sport mode. By disabling the sensors, you can get extra speed to combat stronger winds. I'm not saying it would have been able to fight 40mph sustained winds, but this trick has helped others return their drone home between stronger winds gusts.

Please fly responsibly.

Dear AAPhoto,

In your post, the eleventh line down; you misspelled the word “PARTY.”

Dear chum, I believe you meant to use the word “PART.” Moreover, you mentioned, “THIS IS TAUGHT IN GRAMMAR SCHOOL.”

Dear chum, I didn’t realize that there are institutions designed explicitly for one subject (GRAMMAR) if so; do they have a football team?

Don’t frown Old cum... I mean chum, I’m merely trying point out your grammatical errors and lack of command, regarding the use of the English language.

Also, if I may be so bold to suggest you use a spell/grammar check the next time you feel the desire to correct a pilot, it will be in your benefit.

I bid you a good day sir.

 

[wytnyt]

Dear AAPhoto,

In your post, the eleventh line down; you misspelled the word “PARTY.”

Dear chum, I believe you meant to use the word “PART.” Moreover, you mentioned, “THIS IS TAUGHT IN GRAMMAR SCHOOL.”

Dear chum, I didn’t realize that there are institutions designed explicitly for one subject (GRAMMAR) if so; do they have a football team?

Don’t frown Old cum... I mean chum, I’m merely trying point out your grammatical errors and lack of command, regarding the use of the English language.

Also, if I may be so bold to suggest you use a spell/grammar check the next time you feel the desire to correct a pilot, it will be in your benefit.

I bid you a good day sir.

grammar police must be college educated,ive seen em on forums for 20+ years.

 

[MavicCF]

That looks like a pretty affluent neighborhood, They like their privacy, they may have called the police to report it... did you try calling the local P.D.?

Unortunatly it landed nowhere near where I predicted so probably it wasn’t called in by anyone in that neighborhood. It’s a good thought for the general area though!

 

[Moby-ssx]

Hi guys,

It's been a great run...1 year and i've finally lost the drone. I've always been careful but I guess not careful enough. Was by the beach yesterday (zero wind at ground level) and wanted to take some pics of the sunset. Got a little too confident and took the bird up to 1600 feet. Was not paying attention to the map and within minutes my drone had drifted 6000 feet at 12 mph without any stick input. At 1600 feet the drift is not as apparent unless you're paying attention to the map, which of course I have not. Then I started losing signal to the mavic and had sporadic reconnections and was able to initiate RTH before I finally lost connection entirely. At first I thought that the drone was not moving because of connection issues, but I did have video and the picture didn't seem to be moving forward when I pushed the drone forward. But it did respond to my left and right turns. When I lost connection for good I had about 44% battery left and had managed to descend to 650 feet. The last information that I can see is that the drone seemed to be heading back to home point at 2 mph.

So what I would like to ask anyone who can is to comfirm pilot error based on the flight data below and recommend their best guess on where the drone might have landed/crashed. I did have a getter backer installed on the MP for water landings and I do still have two months on my care refresh. Any help would be appreciated.There are 2 flight records bacause I restarted the remote while trying to reestablish a connection.

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

Dont know where you come from but 6000 feet...... that is like 5500 feet higher than the legal limit in my country. What if.... your bird falls out of the sky and hits someone in the head and they find out after that you breached the height limit with that much.

 

[MavicCF]

Dont know where you come from but 6000 feet...... that is like 5500 feet higher than the legal limit in my country. What if.... your bird falls out of the sky and hits someone in the head and they find out after that you breached the height limit with that much.

Read the post you quoted, it’s 1600 feet.

 

[Turn11]

if the last state of RTH is basically not making any headway back,

Question, if the drone is at some high altitude and is loosing headway because of headwinds. When RTH is initiated it will come down to RTH altitude wouldn't it gain headway to home-point? Was it too little too late?

 

[MavicCF]

Question, if the drone is at some high altitude and is loosing headway because of headwinds. When RTH is initiated it will come down to RTH altitude wouldn't it gain headway to home-point? Was it too little too late?

If you are flying above the RTH altitude it will stay at that altitude when RTH is initiated. It won’t come down to the set RTH altitude.

 

[Arnold]

These are the kinds of posts that really kill the joy of participating at this forum. About the only time I return to the forum is with the Saturday summary of popular posts. Even then, I am reluctant to click through to request for help, because I know there will be plenty of drone police, who, instead of helping, feel the incessant need to deride, ridicule, insult and trash someone who needs help.

I sure hope @Just_nick and @Clockman feel tough and proud. Because that's probably the only thing good that comes of his post. Little people have to feel tough on the internet. I guess that's inevitable.

To the OP, I'm sorry you've lost your Mavic. I've had mine for over a year. I've had close calls, and have been very fortunate up to this point. Each time I take it out, I get butterflies and feel the anxiety of "what ifs".

Ultimately, it looks like you lost her due to inattention. Whether that happened at 200', 400', or 1600' is absolutely irrelevant. The winds aloft were faster than the MP could compensate for, and ultimately it was unable to return to you.

I thank you for your kind words. And I don't mind the additional useless commentary from some other users. At 41 years or age you learn to just tune out the noise. With that said, I am at an age where I don't see the MP as a toy, but as a tool to take great some great photos. I have been to 1600 hundred feet several times and each time I try to observe my surroundings (airports, aircraft, birds, etc) before going up that high or even going up at all. I even have a preflight checklist. This baby has held up like a pro in flight. It's just a solid piece of machinery. And that's when you start having to much confidence in what it can do. You are so right, it was inattention which finally got me!

 

[Arnold]

Quoted for the douchebaggery.

HEY EVERYONE. WE ARE IN THE PRESENCE OF MR.PERFECT.

Hows the exwife? Your kids talk to you much anymore?

LOVE IT!!

 

[Cuervo]

Not much to say but that 1600 feet appears to be as high as this bird will go so all I can do is find a higher peak to launch from.

 

[Cuervo]

Arnold wanted feedback and got it, posts like this are a waste of time. Go fight on Faceboog.

Where did you get your goggles?